


slow change may pull us apart

by satellites (brella)



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Breakfast Club Fusion, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 13:05:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/639201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short <i>Sincerely Yours</i> coda. Wally and Artemis have a lot of missed connections and miscommunications the week after detention, so the next Saturday, Dick decides to do some damage control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	slow change may pull us apart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thewritething (melissa13)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melissa13/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Sincerely Yours](https://archiveofourown.org/works/542768) by [satellites (brella)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites). 



> After I swore to myself that I wouldn't write any more of this. Ah well. It was a Christmas present for Melissa, who is the best.

“Stay cozy!” Dick sings behind her, and before she has the time to even react, to even punch him in his smug little face, he has shoved her forward with far more force than she’d have expected of him and slammed the storage closet door closed behind her.

Artemis manages to throw her arms out just in time to keep from smashing headlong into the shelves, but her hand catches on something else instead – the woolen back of a letter jacket. With a yell, she falls to the floor and drags the wearer of the jacket down with her.

She lands on the floor with a thud and manages to roll herself over with barely a second to halt the form about to collapse on top of her, splaying her hands out over a warm chest, wincing at the way the weight bears down on her. She scowls and wrenches her eyes open and, right then and there, forgets how to breathe.

“Hi,” Wally splutters out, on all fours over her, his nose perhaps an inch or so from hers. She can count the small explosion of freckles at the tip of his nose, but they’re fast disappearing behind a blush.

“Get the fuck off of me,” she growls, against every other thought in her head right now, and Wally gulps and scrambles off of her, banging ungracefully into the shelves she’d earlier managed to evade.

He sits awkwardly a foot away from her, his knees touching, his letter jacket bright even in the dimness (and she can see the bare spot on the sleeve where she’d torn the patch off, and it makes her stomach thud down to her feet).

“What is going on?” she demands, sitting up and brushing the dust off of her hoodie. “Why did Grayson decide to shove me in here with  _you_?”

She spits the last word out and Wally actually flinches.

“Uh,” he mumbles awkwardly, his eyes darting to the floor. “I dunno. He threw me in here first. About twenty minutes ago.”

He chews his lip, hard, and she knows that he’s thinking (and it’s ridiculous; she’d only had detention with him and kissed him a week ago and already she knows what every flicker in his stupid green eyes means).

“Why’re you mad?” he finally blurts out.

She stares at him, curling her fingers into fists, trying to fight back the heat rising to her cheeks.

“I’m not,” she spits. That seems to get Wally to respond normally, slumping his shoulders and scoffing at her, shaking his head and glaring tight-jawed at the opposite wall.

“Bull-shiiiit,” he sings, waggling his fingers for emphasis.

“Shut up,” she snaps. “You didn’t talk to me all week; you don’t have the right to be riding my ass now.”

Wally mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “If only.”

“What did you just say?” she hisses.

“I said you’re being stupid,” he replies frankly, which makes her splutter speechlessly. “I was  _sick_  last week, idiot. I caught a cold. And by the time I got back on Thursday you were running off whenever I tried to explain. Or apologize. Or breathe.”

Artemis stares at him, feeling, infuriatingly, a bit silly. Her motorcycle boots squeak against the floor when she stretches her legs out, and she reaches up to fiddle with the chain of her necklace, folding her lips in.

“Screw you,” she mutters, and then, “Sorry.”

“I wanted to talk to you, if that’s what you’re so flipped about,” Wally continues, sounding uncharacteristically spiteful. “I wanted to do more than talk, but whatever. I felt like shit on Monday but I still tried to get out of bed so I could come to school because I  _knew_  you’d end up being ridiculous about it. Did you seriously think I’d just use you for detention entertainment and then blow you off?”

“Yes,” Artemis says before she can stop herself.

It says everything she needs to and everything she doesn’t want to. Wally falls silent and she forces herself to keep her eyes on the floor, refusing to look at him, refusing to acknowledge how he might be looking at _her_. Okay, so she’d cried a little on Monday during passing period and it had been disgusting. So she’d tried to throw the patch into the garbage and then gone back out at two in the morning to dig it out of the rotten leftovers. So what?

Something in the air shifts and she glances up before she can stop herself. Her breath catches in her throat and she has to gulp it down.

Wally is suddenly so close to her, having scooted over while she’d been mentally shooting her frustrations at the floor. He’s crouched between her parted legs, his elbows resting on his knees, staring at her with something in his eyes that she doesn’t dare try reading into.

She can’t bring herself to say anything. She flounders a little, embarrassingly rendered speechless by how _there_  he is, every freckle and eyelash (and he has so many) and hair gathering in her vision, his breath clouding up just slightly in front of him from the chill in the closet.

Her eyes dart to his lips, barely apart and wind-chapped and pink from the cold. When her gaze roves back up to his, she finds him staring at her, half-lidded, sort of sleepy, his breath warm against her mouth.

“Wa—” she starts to whisper, but before she can finish, he’s shot his arms forward and grabbed her face at either side, cradling her head between his cold hands, and he practically smashes their lips together, clumsy and emphatic and, aggravatingly, everything she’d wanted.

In an instant, before she can even think of moving her limbs, she’s sagged forward and wrapped her arms around his torso, pressing him to her, tugging him forward, and he loses his balance and she loses hers and they both fall backwards, tangled limbs and melded mouths.

And he tastes just the same, every speck of him spreading over her tongue as she tangles her fingers unforgivingly in his hair, breathing unevenly through her nose. He presses his hips against hers and she sighs out, finally letting her eyes just close.

She breaks off and he tries to follow, but she dodges him. “Wally, we’re in a storage closet; this is exactly what that little fucker wanted.”

“He always did have my best interests at heart,” Wally mutters dazedly, never taking her eyes off of hers, leaning forward to try kissing her again.

It takes every ounce of strength in her body and then some to lift her hand and clap it over his mouth.

“Wally,” she says again, looking him in the eye, “You don’t want this. You don’t want me.”

He pulls a face as though he’s astonished to discover that he’s eaten something very sour and jerks his head back.

“What?” he demands disbelievingly. “Wait, back up—”

“Look,” she cuts in, her voice shaking. “I get that I’m totally compelling and awesome, but I don’t actually feel that way inside most of the time so you don’t like me for  _me_ ; you like me for some stupid persona I put on in detention and you—”

“Artemis,” he murmurs, and she stops immediately. No one’s ever said her name like that, like it means something.

“What?” she whispers, letting her fingers loiter on his lower lip, skirting across it at the nails.

“I know who you are,” he says quietly, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “And I know what I want.” Then the other. “And you’re incredible…” Her nose. “And you have my varsity patch…” Her forehead, and then he smiles, mischievously, lingering there. “So you’re my best option.”

Artemis laughs because that’s all she can think to do, but it comes out so much more shocked and fragile than she’d intended.

“Wally, we met once,” she reminds him. “For nine hours. In detention. You hated me.”

He shrugs, lowering his head and grinning sheepishly up at her from behind his flopping shock of hair.

“Nah,” he whispers. “I don’t think so. But even if I did, uh… nobody’s perfect.” He grimaces. “‘Cept you.”

“Bull-shiiiit,” she sings, raising her eyebrow triumphantly.

“God, okay,” he says, “I know we’re supposed to talk through the emotional stuff but can we  _please_  get back to the part where you kiss me?”

Artemis obliges him. His tongue is hot and tastes like oatmeal and she takes every sound he makes and swallows it down, locking it inside of her, for a rainy day.

 

* * *

 

“What did you do with them, Grayson?” Roy Harper barks when Dick comes swaggering back into the library. His accusatory stare is matched by Megan’s, Conner’s, Kaldur’s, and Zatanna’s. 

Dick puffs his chest out proudly before slipping back into his seat. “Lighten up, Roy. I’m just  _helping_  them.” 

“Call a cop,” Roy mutters, sinking churlishly down into his chair, and he’s sure that this is the strangest detention he’s ever been to. 


End file.
